Mischa Barton Confirms 'Complicated' Off-Screen Romance with Ben McKenzie 'Right out of the Gate' on The O.C.

Mischa Barton is finally setting the record straight on the nature of her off-screen relationship with Ben McKenzie. 

Barton was just 17 when she made her debut as Marissa on The O.C. alongside McKenzie, who was 25 at the time and played her romantic interest Ryan. Their romance wasn’t “just on screen,” though, Barton, 38, admitted on Call Her Daddy on Wednesday. “It was kind of complicated for me.”

“I went into that a virgin, a kid, really feeling like I needed to grow up quickly,” she recalled of her early days on the hit Fox series, where she was the youngest cast member. “Acting with people older than me was a bit like, Oh wow. They know what they’re doing. And there’s gonna be relationships on this show and you’re gonna need to play that part, and I didn’t feel really ready for that ‘cause I was always a really late bloomer in school and I hadn’t really dated.”

Barton said she had “no idea what I was doing, really. So I felt like I needed to catch up I think a lot of the time.”

The age gap with her costars “was a bit tricky for everyone,” she continued. “I was experiencing all my firsts and I was so young and my mom would be on set and ... I just needed a lot more attention in that sense.”

“It was a lot of my firsts, let’s put it like that. And that kind of really separated me, a little, from them, in the sense that I wasn’t out there living on my own in L.A. yet,” she said of her life compared to those of her costars, including Rachel Bilson, Adam Brody and Melinda Clarke.

Her off-screen relationship with McKenzie, now 45, was her “first,” she added. “And I had no idea what I was doing.”

“I think that kind of set things off on the wrong foot, too, because it was like – you know people hook up on these shows and whatever, these things happen, but it was – we threw ourselves all into it very fast.”

Once she and McKenzie (who is now married to Morena Baccarin) went their separate ways, things got “tricky,” because they had gotten together “right out of the gate” on the early days of the show.

“I felt overwhelmed and not ready for any of that,” she recalled. “I remember they were like, ‘Mischa’s disappeared with Ben and she’s only 17 ½, 18,’ and the producers went to my parents and were like — it was kind of a whole ordeal.”

PEOPLE has reached out to McKenzie for comment.

Barton’s three-season run on the show felt more like “seven years,” she added, as it was all “crammed into this tiny little space” — and starting off dating her costar didn’t exactly help.

“That’s in the very beginning of the show before we’re even halfway through a season, so there was a lot going on there. That show ... so much happened in three seasons.”

Barton has previously said that her time on The O.C. “wasn’t the most ideal environment for a young, sensitive girl who's also been thrust into stardom to have to put up with,” as she told E! News she dealt with “bullying” behind the scenes and “felt very unprotected.” 

She also opened up about feeling “pressured” to lose her virginity during her time on the show in a candid essay for Harper’s Bazaar U.K. in 2021, where she wrote that she felt “like a fraud” playing her character, who she described as “fast and loose,” while she was “still a virgin.”

"The kids in the show were quintessential rich, privileged American teenagers drinking, taking drugs, and of course having sex. I knew it was important to get this thing — my virginity — that was looming over me, the elephant in the room if you will, out of the way," Barton recalled of the role she started playing at 17.

“I started to really worry that I couldn't play this character if I didn't hurry up and mature a little. Did I ever feel pressured to have sex with someone? Well, after being pursued by older men in their thirties, I eventually did the deed," she continued. "I feel a little guilty because I let it happen. I felt so much pressure to have sex, not just from him, but society in general.”

In recent months, though, she’s reconnected with many of her former castmates. 

“We've been more in touch again lately just because of the things like that, the [Welcome to the O.C.  oral history book], [Bilson and Clarke’s] O.C. podcast; we've all kind of reconnected,” Barton told PEOPLE in September. “I got to see Tate [Donovan] and Melinda in person not too long ago and did the podcast with Rachel, so we've been talking quite a bit. It's been great to talk to them lately and I'm really proud of them.”

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The O.C. can be streamed on Hulu and Max.